The Daily Wire

Madonna turns up at Dublin funeral as heavy rain causes flooding in Galway and more on royal birth

Eoin Burke-KennedyTue, Jul 23

__NAME____VALUE__

__TEAM_A__

__SCORE_A__

v

__TEAM_B__

__SCORE_B__

__LIVESCOREFOOTER__

__GAMETIME____GAMESECTION__

__SCORETEXT__

Sort by:

Latest first

Oldest first

This event has now ended

09:24

Unsurprisingly, the news flow across the water is dominated by the arrival of a new male heir to the throne. He is to be called Byron. All hail, Byron Windsor.

Ok, so I made that last bit up. His name hasn't been announced yet. James, George, and Henry are considered the leading contenders.

09:29

Ice cream vendors beware, a familiar grey hue hangs in the sky. Air temperatures are cooler. According to Met Éireann, a large blocking anticyclone which has fended off Atlantic weather systems from Ireland for most of the month is slipping southwards over continental Europe.

Which county will be first to break the spell and report rain?

09:39

By way of introduction, albeit later than planned, I'm Eoin Burke-Kennedy here with your daily serving of news. The lead story in today's Irish Times centres on Howlin's plan to clamp down on leaders' allowances.

Until now, the scheme permitted Independent TDs and Senators to receive thousands of euros in personal and unvouched funding from the exchequer. Nearly €7.5 million was paid out under the leaders’ allowance system in 2011. Read more

09:43

Breaking news: A man has been fatally stabbed and another seriously injured in an incident at a house in Ennis, Co Clare. The fatally injured man, a 31-year-old, died in an ambulance on route to the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick. A second individual found later near the scene is being treated in hospital.

09:48

A selection of British newspapers, headlining the royal birth

10:07

On its website, the Guardian has introduced a "Republican" button, which enables visitors to block royal baby news. I wonder if we could adopt something similiar here for stories about The Gathering.

Sad news. US actor Dennis Farina has died at the age of 69. His publicist, Lori de Waal said he died in hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona, after suffering a blood clot in his lung. Though he was better known in recent years for his role as detective Joe Fontana on the hit crime drama Law & Order, he had an accomplished list of credits to his name.
In my view, however, nothing surpasses his role as Jimmy Serrano in Midnight Run. I've included a medley of Serrano clips from the film.

10:25

Actor Dennis Farina RIP

10:31

11:00

It's nothing we didn't know but it's proving a must read on our site. Household budgets are being squeezed and consumers are switching to German discount stores, Aldi and Lidl, in droves.

The data from retail research group Kantar Worldpanel shows shoppers with children are coming under particular pressure this year and while grocery prices are climbing, this cohort of shoppers is spending less. Read more

11:16

Budget airline Ryanair has offered to “unconditionally” sell its 29 per cent shareholding in Aer Lingus to any other EU airline. The carrier said it is making the offer “in order to dispel the [the UK competition commission’s] unfounded and invented concern that Ryanair’s shareholding may prevent Aer Lingus from being acquired by another EU airline”. Read more

11:24

Bollywood is in town again. Following on from the success of Ek Tha Tiger (shot in Dublin last year), a host of Bollywood producers, directors and location scouts are in Ireland this week to explore the possibility of setting another blockbuster here. They were invited Tourism Ireland in India, in conjunction with the Irish Film Board.

11:49

Dear William & Kate: If William is 100% royal and Princess Kate is 0% royal, will that make your son a half-blood prince? #RoyalBaby

News flash: The economy has recorded the first annual increase in house prices since the crash. According to the latest stats from the CSO, the price of residential properties rose by 1.2% nationally in the year to June, representing the first annual increase since Janaury 2008. While properties in Dublin rose by 4.2% during the period in question, those in the rest of the country fell by 1%.

12:04

Is online pornography poisoning childern's minds? “We are allowing our children to see material that a decade ago would have only been acceptable in an extreme fetish club,” Senator Mary Ann O’Brien told the Seanad yesterday.

Few would doubt the need to curb children's access to pornography but creating nationwide filters, which is being considered in Britain, is fiendishly difficult. Take, for example, schools which have tried to block student access to Facebook during class time. Many pupils simply bypassed the measures through proxy sites. It's inconceivable that a national pornography filter wouldn't be flouted in the same way.

Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte said today he would consider introducing measures to curb the accessibility of online pornography in Ireland. He was speaking after British prime minister David Cameron announced plans to have pornography blocked from every home in the UK unless the user seeks to receive it.

We've decided to lead the site with the news about the highest monthly rise in property prices since the crash. Do the figures represent a bottoming out of the market? Probably. Who knows. After what happened, we have an obligation to be cautious. Obviously, Dublin is on a different trajectory than the rest of the country but that's been the case for some time.

Anecdotally, there's a string of stories about bidding wars in some of the more upmarket suburbs of the capital which does seem to reflect a shortage of certain properties in certain areas. Having said that, the big elephant in the room is the huge swathe of investment properties which are vacant or in arrears or both, and which need to be repossessed and resold for the market to function properly.

We frequently talk about the German obsession with inflation and its historical orgins but, it seems to me, we have an equal level of hysteria about repossession which may or may not stem from our colonial past. While no-one wants to see families or individuals evicted, the failure to respossess properties is storing up problems for the future, and makes accurate readings of the property market impossible. That's my two cents worth anyway.

Are we Irish too proud to say we enjoyed the royal birth? Are people who criticise the coverage often superior "in an unbecoming way"? Do we need more happy drama in the media? My colleague Ann Marie Hourihane has written a provocative piece about the royal birth that's bound to whip up a storm. Read it here.

Silver bullion worth £23 million has been recovered from a ship sunk by the Nazis off the Irish coast. OK, so it's 300 miles off the Irish coast but it's a great story. The SS Gairsoppa, a 412-foot British cargo ship that went down in February 1941 in the North Altantic. Salvage company Odyssey Marine was given contract by the UK transport deparment, and the company will retain 80 per cent of the net value of the cargo.

How can people living in the 21st century still use the job title - treasure hunter? Is there job agencies recruiting buccaneers, swashbucklers, fortune-hunters? What are the qualifications? Being able to swim underwater with a dagger in your teeth?

15:22

I thought the BBC were over-egging it a bit this morning with the headline "World celebrates royal birth" but I've just been informed Paddypower are betting on

- Name of first child

-Location of Baby Cambridge's Christening

- Baby Cambridge's First Word

- First Official Overseas Visit

- Royal Baby Number Two

- Age at first nightclub visit photograph

- Royal Baby Career

- Royal Baby University

And who says the Irish can't celebrate the royals!

15:37

It's official, there's moisture in the air in Dublin City centre. It's not exactly what you would call rain though. OK false alarm, the sun has broken through again. Phew, it was touch and go there for a minute.

15:42

Rare image of Saturn's rings taken a few days ago by camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft

16:20

Pop diva Madonna turned up in Dublin today for the funeral of interior architect David Collins. The funeral Mass was held at St Patrick's Church in Monkstown. Madonna was just one of several celebrities to attend the funeral.

Collins, who has died last week aged 58, was a highly acclaimed London-based architect. He was behind the redesign of the bars of the Berkeley, the Connaught and Claridges, and created interiors for the Alexander McQueen stores.

16:29

Madonna, who attended the funeral of interior architect David Collins in Monkstown, Dublin earlier today.

16:41

Heavy rain and flooding reported in Galway. Dublin clouding over. Heat wave ending.
Met Éireann is forecasting heavy showers and thundery downpours in places - especially across the midlands, north and west. It's also issued a blight warning for good measure.

Turkeys voting for Christmas? Senators have voted by 33 to 25 for legislation paving the way for the autumn referendum to abolish the House. Read more.

17:26

Royalty makes some people soft in the head. Take this insight on the baby's sex from CNN royal contributor, Victoria Arbiter. "My first thought, I have to say, was this is how brilliant a royal Kate is. There are women throughout British royal family history that have panicked not being able to deliver a boy, and here we are, Kate did it first time. So it does mean, of course, the change in the next succession conversation is over for another 30 years or so, but we’re celebrating and thrilled that Kate has had a healthy, bouncing baby boy."